


know they're cutting you deep

by hellstrider



Series: Scars 'verse [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Body Worship, Domestic Fluff, First Time, I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS TAKE THEM, Jon Snow Defense Squad, Jon is Horny and Concerned, Jonmund, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Sansa is the best sister, Scar Worship, Tormund is a Menace but Jon loves him anyway, just domestic jonmund don't mind me, pre-Dragonstone, scars 'verse, this is set between 'now the healing starts' and 'tears we bury'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-04-24 19:01:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19179463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellstrider/pseuds/hellstrider
Summary: "there's too much dark in the world to worry over where we find the light, jon."





	know they're cutting you deep

**Author's Note:**

> title, again, from 'scars' by tove lo. this is set post 'now let the healing start' and before 'tears we bury'. not necessary to read nlths before this, but some quotes are pulled from it. anyways love u all xoxoxo

Jon lays a bundle of dried flowers at the end of Rickon’s tomb, right beside their father’s. His heart is heavy back in the home that was never really his, burdened by the memories that keep catching at his skin and tearing at him. The ghosts’ voices have faded but they remain ever at the edge of his vision, chased away only by the rare edge of Sansa’s cutting smile or the roar of Tormund’s laughter.

After uttering a soft prayer, Jon turns and makes the somber climb out of the crypts. He blinks through the grey sunlight and a huge, furry head thumps up against his leg, nearly sending him toppling over into the snow.

“There you are,” Jon huffs, running his fingers through Ghost’s fur. “Where’ve you been all day? More importantly, why are you absolutely filthy?”

Ghost whines low and ducks into a long stretch, yawning so wide it makes Jon’s jaw ache in empathy. A raucous round of cheers explodes over the courtyard then, and Jon, half intrigued and half dubious, follows the sound around the kennels to where northerners and wildlings alike form a makeshift arena in the middle of the keep.

It doesn’t shock him to find that Tormund is right in the center, stripped to the waist, red hair caked with mud. His opponent is one of the Knights of the Vale, looking wild-eyed and a little terrified but refusing to back down, which Jon both admires and sympathizes. He’s smaller than Tormund – which seems to be the case for most men in Winterfell – and quicker, but he’s young, and Jon knows Tormund can see the next three moves he’ll make before he does.

Jon’s gut twists into a pleasant knot as he watches the ripple of muscle over Tormund’s back, beneath the mud and his scar-laced skin hardened by battle and ice and steel. A roar goes through the crowd when he ducks a swift punch and rains his knuckles over the Vale-knight’s ribs, hummingbird quick. The Knight tumbles back, stunned, and Tormund is quick to follow.

Ghost howls along with the jeering and cheers when they rise. With warm fondness thick in his chest, Jon glances up to see Sansa clapping mildly from the open-air corridor above, one brow arched in amusement. Jon lumbers up the stairwell to join his sister, watching the fight as he goes.

He can admit he loves Tormund like this, when he’s wild but controlled all at once, each movement stunningly brutal but calculated, precise. He fights with his soul, the two contradicting halves of him blending together to become a strength when in other men it might be a weakness. An eclipsed sun, dangerous to look at but too brilliant to look away.

“Should I be worried?” Jon asks his sister as he nears; “there were bets, or so I’ve heard,” Sansa replies as another round of cheers breaks the air, “something about Tormund fighting a bear? Brienne knows more than I do.”

“ _Fighting_ a bear? Is that the story now?” Jon huffs, leaning against the banister as the knight of the Vale has his legs swept out from beneath him and lands face-first in the mud. “I suppose we should do something. Before he breaks someone important.”

“Mm,” Sansa hums idly. “You seemed to be enjoying it well enough.”

A brief panic seizes him; Jon glances towards his sister to find her wise, fathomless blue eyes already watching him. Her gaze is soft, warm, so far from Catelyn’s ever had been. It soothes him some, especially when Sansa reaches out to grip his hand.

“He’s an odd sort,” she says, keeping her voice down low. “But he makes you smile. I’m happy for you. There’s too much dark in the world to worry over where we find the light, Jon.”

A lump rises in his throat and he turns his hand to grip Sansa’s in return.

“When did you get so wise?” he asks, a little thickly, and his sister’s lips curve.

“Women are always wiser than men.”

“Aye,” Jon huffs with a laugh, turning his gaze down to where Tormund has the knight of the Vale pinned under one boot, “especially when they’re the daughter of Ned Stark.”

“You didn’t let your head snuff out your heart,” Sansa says sagely, “I think it’s safe to say you got a little bit of father’s wisdom. Enough of it, at least.”

Jon doesn’t bother hiding the smile that pulls at his lips. He brings Sansa close to press a kiss to her temple, then turns his gaze back to the crowd below. Piercing blue eyes strike to the core of him and Tormund winks roguishly, looking spectacular and filthy with mud in his hair and across his face.

Jon’s stomach fills with wings, and his grip on the banister tightens when heat unfurls at the base of his spine and surges up into his chest to soften the ice clutching at his heart. The wildling’s nostrils flare then, as if he can smell it on him, and Jon feels his ears grow hot when he arches a salacious brow. Sansa muffles a laugh and Jon pushes away from the banister, the heat spreading to his cheeks.

“Don’t hesitate to send Brienne in if it becomes a riot,” Jon tells her, “none of them would stand a chance against our lady of Tarth.”

Sansa nods and squeezes his arm one more time, and though his face is red his chest is flush with adoration for his sister. Jon is grateful just to see her smile, even at his expense, and he kisses her brow again before he makes his way into the keep.

He passes his father’s old quarters – now rightfully belonging to Sansa – and his own old rooms before coming to the humble apartments that used to be maester Luwin’s. The rooms are small and smell of old books and dust, but there’s a stone bath in the adjoining washroom instead of a wooden one, big and spacious.

He calls for one of the serving girls and there’s an awkward moment during which he feels terribly pretentious for even having a serving girl at all. The girl can’t be older than Arya would be now, with wide doe-eyes and mousy brown hair.

“Would it be much trouble to ready a bath?” Jon asks after a beat, and the girl seems to smother a smile.

“No trouble ‘t all, m’lord,” she says, and sets about doing just that, humming as she does.

Jon looks over missives and messages while the bath is being drawn to distract from his discomfort, pouring a mug of warm wine out of habit more than anything else. The missives are all startlingly normal as they begin to solidify their hold once more in Winterfell, all about trade lines or shortages of something or other, reports on the Gift and the startling dearth of wildling activity across it.

“Bath’s drawn, m’lord,” the serving girl pipes up, and he nearly inhales his wine, all but forgetting about the bath.

“Thank you so much,” he says, and means it; she flushes, then dips in to a quick curtsy and nearly barrels right through Tormund when the wildling appears in the door, hair dripping wet and barrel of a chest gleaming with water Jon dreads is from a trough.

The girl squeaks like a strangled raven and all but flees. Tormund huffs a laugh as he kicks the door shut and flips down the lock, tossing his bundle of furs unceremoniously into a corner. Jon offers out the mug of wine, if only to watch the betrayed grimace that flickers over Tormund’s face when he swallows it down.

“Piss,” the wildling rasps. “Don’t know how you can drink that.”

“Says the man who drinks fermented milk.”

Tormund ignores him in favor of peering around the room, then arches a brow down at him. “What was the mouse doing here, eh?”

Jon huffs, shaking his head. “Lying in wait to stab me. She was drawing a bath, Tormund, settle.”

He rises from his desk and the wildling hums low in his chest, catching him with ease when he tries to give him a wide berth. The protests he lets out are ignored, and Tormund, heedless of his own lingering filth, drags Jon close by the hips to nuzzle over his cheek with the tip of an absolutely frigid nose.

“You smell like Ghost,” Jon says with a soft laugh. “Seven _hells_ you’re freezing!”

“A week in a castle and you’ve gone back to a prissy lordling,” Tormund says, though fondness laces his deep voice. “I saw you watching, Jon Snow. I know how your belly filled with heat and your cock went hard. You like the wild on me.”

It always catches him off-guard. The wildling says what he thinks and nothing less, and while he’s heard harsh talk all his life – a good lot of it coming from Tormund himself - now that he speaks as his lover, it’s entirely different. Jon’s gut floods with renewed heat, and his throat goes thick, mouth dry as his lungs struggle for air.

His silence is as much an answer as anything, and Tormund gives him a rather pleased little smirk before he leans in and brushes the faintest kiss over his lips. Jon catches a soft breath in his throat and digs his fingertips into one of the wildling’s wrists, lifting his chin in a clear plea.

Words don’t come as easily to Jon, at least the right ones – the honest ones – but he knows Tormund will understand him regardless. A low, pleased growl vibrates through Tormund’s chest when their mouths meet, and the wildling reaches up to pull the leather thong in his hair free. He sinks a huge hand into Jon’s black curls and gathers him close, tasting of wine and smoke and snow, of the feral spirit curled in the center of his chest – the one Jon shares now, can feel stirring and growing with each passing day in the cavern of his belly.

Jon drags his hands over scarred skin, both old ones and ones he knows. The starburst on his chest where the arrow had dug through him that night at Castle Black stops him, and Jon rubs his thumb over it until Tormund growls again, the sound rumbling against Jon’s tongue. The Wildling splays a hand low on his back to clutch him close, the other guiding Jon’s fingers away from the scar and to his throat instead.

It’s like being devoured and being brought to life. Tormund kisses like he fights, with everything he has, no restraint or hesitation and Jon can only try to keep up. He lets the outside world fade away until nothing exists beyond his chambers – theirs, in all but name – until all he knows is this.

Hours might pass and Jon wouldn’t care, kept and held and safe in the circle of the wildling’s arms. Soon though, needing to breathe, Jon tips back and lifts his gaze to meet the wildling’s. Tormund’s intense stare is lidded and heavy, hunted and hungry as the wolves that dwell in the forest just beyond the keep.

Jon traces the curve of his lip with a thumb and secretly revels in the smell of him, in the blood-smoke-snow and the fighting sweat. It’s intoxicating and thrilling, terrifying and savage, wonderful and free – all the things that come to mind whenever he thinks of the fire-haired wildling. Of home.

He doesn’t mind the filth, not really, but the allure of the bath begins to seep through Jon and, feeling a little drunk, he steps back from Tormund with ease. He keeps that piercing gaze for a moment, and then Tormund moves to follow him and Jon’s stomach bottoms out.

_If I asked you to keep me, would you?_

For the past week, Jon has felt like his skin has been set on fire. Ever since the night after the battle, Tormund has been his constant shadow, whether it be in actual presence at his side or the cling of his gaze from afar. Every touch, every glance is the strike of lightning through his bones; all Jon can do is gather the moments they share and try to hold them close, memorizing each second with a reverence he’s never felt before.

_I might have hated you that night, Jon Snow, but you were still mine._

Steam curls up from the clear water of the deep stone bath and it smells vaguely of lavender and mint; soap and oils sit on the lip of the bath, along with another pitcher of wine and a silver goblet. Tormund pauses in the doorway and snorts.

“Is this how a King bathes? Like he brings his throne with him into the water?”

Jon smiles as he begins to unlace his jerkin; Tormund’s hands soon push him away and the Wildling nuzzles into the nape of his neck as he pulls the leather threads loose.

“If you don’t like it, you can leave. Go back to the trough outside.”

The Wildling nips at his pulse, sending a shudder rushing down his spine.

“Bringing you with me.”

“You’re staying here.”

“That an order, little king crow?”

“If you like.”

He’ll never grow tired of Tormund’s laugh, a thing like thunder coated in velvet.

After shucking away his jerkin, Jon steps out of his boots and Tormund out of his sodden, muck-caked trousers, tossing them away as well. The water is the kindest sort of warm when Jon sinks into it and he lets the heat chase the goosebumps away and loosen his tense, tight muscles.

“Are you joining me or staying filthy all night?” Jon asks; he knows Tormund is watching him, can feel the burn of his stare.

It thrills him and sends a mad flutter through his gut, a sensation he’s not felt in – too long, and certainly never like this. The water sings softly when the Wildling steps into the bath, and Jon runs wet hands through his hair if only for something to do, giving Tormund the perfect opening to slide his arms around his waist and pull him back to his chest.

“You belong like this,” the wildling says lowly in his ear, “you belong naked and wild and free.”

A shiver rushes down his spine and brings with it a new wave of gooseflesh down his chest and arms. Tormund slips away then, sinking low in the water as he circles Jon. He follows the wildling, drawn by the chains of his gaze, and they circle for a moment like wolves.

“Rather thought you believed I belonged to you,” Jon says, a clear challenge, and Tormund takes it like one.

“You do,” he says, breaking the circle to cross the bath and crowd Jon against the edge. “You know that. You just like hearing it.”

Read and judged correctly; Tormund is the only one who can do that, who can pull the thoughts out of him and speak them back.

“That obvious, am I?”

“To me.”

Jon reaches up to run his hands through the thick toss of the wildling’s hair, slicking it back along his skull. It’s soft as down to the touch and Jon is quickly growing addicted to tangling his fingers through it.

He gazes up at the wildling’s face, takes in the scar over his right eyebrow and the cool warmth of his eyes, the elegant slide of his nose and the snow-burnt tan of his skin. Jon’s throat goes so incredibly tight, pulled shut by an invisible fist and Tormund slides a hand over his cheek, brow creasing with soft concern.

“You make it so easy,” Jon murmurs, “so easy to be glad I came back.”

And maybe, he thinks, as Tormund’s face goes soft and his touch turns reverent, Jon does know what words to use sometimes. Tormund makes him want to try. He makes him laugh through the shadow that clings, makes his ghosts go silent. He makes Jon want to grip life tight and hold onto it for as long as he can, so long as he’s right there to keep him.

“And you’re to stay alive, Jon Snow,” Tormund says huskily, mouth sliding over his cheek. “You’re mine. You’ll die when I let you, and only then.”

Heat devours the sorrow trying to ruin him as Tormund kisses down his throat and Jon lets it, lets the desire unfurl until it’s the only thing he knows. It gets easier every time, easier to let it overwhelm him when he so desperately wants it to, wants nothing more than to be consumed by it.

It’s easy, so easy to lose himself in the way Tormund’s tongue chases his own, easy to forget the world when the wildling is caging him in and his hands are trailing fire over his skin. Jon pleads another kiss and he gets it, until Tormund heaves him onto the edge of the bath and his mouth slides lower.

He’s developed a habit, Jon’s noticed, of tracing the scar right over his heart. The wildling will sometimes be awake long before he is, watching him with solemn eyes he knows are remembering something worse. He can feel Tormund trace the scar when he’s on the edge of sleep, can feel the way he clutches at Jon’s heart even in unconsciousness.

Jon can feel them too. He feels them all the time, sometimes imagines he can still feel the steel sinking into him and biting the life out of him. When Tormund parts his lips over the raised, ragged skin, Jon gasps and presses back into the wall, cock aching and hard between his thighs.

The wildling takes him by the waist and pulls until they’re flush together, trapping Jon’s aching length against his hip. A groan rips through him and he pushes against the wall, arching up in an attempt to get some friction, any at all, but Tormund is far stronger than he is and holds him fast.

“What did I tell you, little crow?” he purrs against his collarbone, “you have to tell me, and you have to mean it.”

  The words clatter and clamor against the back of his teeth – all the things he wants, all the things he needs. Jon feels drunker than he’s ever been, Tormund caging him to the wall as he mouths over the mark that killed him and makes Jon want to love it.

It occurs to him he didn’t ever get to touch him, that night after the battle, and so he does. He slides a hand between them and watches the wildling’s face change and grow fierce when his fingertips rove over the head of his cock, bigger than his own and uncut. Tormund rolls into his hand, slippery and wet, and Jon nearly bites through his cheek.

“You ever taken a cock before, little crow?” His voice is like gravel rolling over broken glass, edged and deadly and it sets his blood on fire in a way he thinks battle should but never has.

“No,” Jon rasps, but it’s all he can think about now, “and I never will if you don’t get on with it.”

Tormund laughs, the kind of laugh that makes Jon’s belly churn and his heart leap, and the wildling catches his chin in a firm but gentle grasp. Their lips slide together, and Tormund reaches with one hand for the oils on the side of the bath; Jon’s need is morphing quickly into desperation, hips cresting up and heart thundering so loudly he’s certain Tormund can hear it.

“You’re still in there,” Tormund says against his mouth, warm and wanting, “still the little crow who knelt to me in the north. Still the little crow that fought so hard to live.”

There’s a soft pop of a cork and Jon’s neck flushes with heat. He’s never imagined what this might feel like, never allowed himself to wonder. The only one he trusts like this is between his legs, his brutal hands gentler than any healer’s. Jon’s skin is too tight, bones too big, and when Tormund slides a finger into him he jumps a little, thighs clenching in on instinct but kept spread by the girth of the wildling’s hips.

“ _Easy_ , little crow,” Tormund soothes against his cheek, “I’ve got you.”

A second finger burns, and Jon bites his lip, head hitting the wall as he clings to Tormund’s huge shoulders. The wildling hushes him softly, goes as slowly and tenderly as Jon would ever allow - and then he crooks his finger after a brief search and hits a spot inside him that makes Jon’s vision blur. A shocked groan spills from his lips, hips arching as heat swells up as high as his chest, and Tormund chuckles quietly.

His free hand slides up to splay over Jon’s jaw and he mouths across his throat. The fire of him begins to surge through Jon, burning everything away that isn’t marked by Tormund’s name – his heart sings and his chest swells with his smoke. It could be hours that drip by, slow and syrupy, and Jon can’t bring himself to care just as long as the wildling is still touching him.

Finally, _finally,_ Tormund seems satisfied he’s pliant and loose – Jon is shaking with it, harder than he’s been in his entire life - and he reaches again for the oil.

“Hold onto me,” the wildling commands gently, and Jon does, curling his arms around his massive shoulders. The burn and stretch as he sinks slowly into him brings tears to his eyes but they’re not of pain – not entirely – but of sheer relief.

The wildfire spins into a hurricane inside him and Jon lets out a hitching gasp that melts into a long, keening moan when the wildling pulls back and slides back inside, filling him until he feels it in his throat. Jon lifts his chin when Tormund noses under it, hips rolling until he’s seeing stars. The pleasure that works up his spine is one he’s never felt before, sears through him with an intensity he’s certain could only come from the man surrounding him.

Emotions threaten to choke him as he’s devoured and worshipped with teeth and tongue, with lips and soft words that send shivers down his spine. Jon digs a hand into Tormund’s hair and clutches him close, his own pleasure falling by the wayside in favor of feeling him like this, of being joined as one like this.

It rips through him, rips him apart, and Tormund is there to gather him back together, huge hands roving over his ribs and dragging his hips closer, so impossibly closer. He never wants it to end, never wants to be pulled apart; Jon chases the wildling’s lips and kisses him with everything he’s got, trading the air in his lungs for the smoke.

He writhes when it becomes too much, too slow, too everything all at once – his cock hurts and his chest is aching, and Tormund hushes him when he whimpers, snapping his hips forward. Jon keens and the wildling growls, the sound shooting right to his length.

“You want to be fucked, little crow? Properly fucked, until you’ll feel it for a week?”

The _yes_ comes like a sigh and Tormund’s eyes go dark, pupils devouring the sea-blue, and all Jon can do is clutch at his arms as he makes good on his word and fucks him, truly fucks him with a hand at his throat and behind his hips. The stone bites into Jon’s shoulders but he doesn’t care, not when Tormund pistons his hips and hits that spot inside him over and over, until he’s certain he’s about to come apart at the seams.

He reaches for his weeping cock and Tormund catches his wrist, pinning it behind him with a strength he doesn’t want to fight. The wildling bites bruises down his chest, up his throat, fucks into him with growls and groans that he desperately tries to memorize.

White hedges his vision and all he knows is this, is the slick slide of their skin and the steam and the heat. The musk of sex is heady and intoxicating, sends lightning down his throat and makes him cry out until it aches.

“Tor,” he begs, when the burn has become a fever; “please, _please –“_

“That’s it, little crow,” the wildling purrs against his ear, “let me see you, let me hear you.”

And then there’s a rough, calloused hand wrapping around him and Jon comes undone with a low, grating keen that all but rips out of him. Tormund fucks him through it, hand working at him until Jon is whimpering and then the wildling grips his hips and heaves him close. Three brutal thrusts and Tormund buries a snarling cry of his name into his chest, right over the scar that took him away, and Jon bites his lip as a thrill runs through him.

Proof of life between his thighs, a guardian who would fight death itself bowing over the mark of his sacrifice; Jon thinks this is the closest thing he’s ever felt to faith. He leans back against the wall and beckons Tormund close with firm hands, tugging at his beard until their lips meet. His skin buzzes with something better than adrenaline, buzzes as if he’s had just the right amount of whiskey, just enough to turn his bones gold.

“I should keep you here,” Tormund murmurs against his mouth, “right here. Never let you leave this room.”

“What about the real north?” Jon asks, voice hoarse and gritty. He combs his fingers through that wild toss of red hair and Tormund ducks his head to drop soft kisses over his collarbone.

“Rather have you. Rather have you _safe,_ Jon Snow.”

Jon’s throat grows thick. He drags the wildling back up for another kiss, wrapping his aching, tired legs around his waist to keep him close. His back’s growing sore, propped like this, but he can’t really be arsed to move.

“When it’s over,” Jon says, and he’s a fool for dreaming, a fool for hoping, but he can’t stop it. “When it’s all over, I’ll go with you.”

Tormund leans back, cupping his chin in one hand as his brow furrows. Jon splays a hand over the muscled swell of his stomach, follows a scar up to his chest, to where his heart beats strong and steady beneath.

“I’ve never fit here,” Jon tells him quietly. “Winterfell belongs to the Starks, and I’m not a Stark. Don’t give me that look, it’s the truth.”

“I know a fierce little wolf that would disagree.”

“I’ve never felt what I felt beyond the wall anywhere,” he says, and Tormund’s face grows soft at the edges. “I’m not taking you from your lands, and I’m not staying behind when you go back.”

“I’d stay here, if you wanted.”

Jon’s heart clenches. “I know. I want to go home, Tormund. I want to feel it again.”

_I want to be free._

He doesn’t say it, but he thinks the wildling hears him anyway. Tormund kisses him, a chaste thing that moves his soul, and then draws him away from the wall and sinks down into the water, keeping his arms tight around him.

“I’ll build you a home,” Tormund tells him, and Jon can’t fight the smile that comes as the wildling drifts towards the soaps at the edge of the bath. “I’ll build _us_ a home out of oak and stone to keep you in, little crow. You can fly free in the north, run the forests with your wolf; we can fuck, and hunt and fight and no lord or king will bring us to heel.”

The mere thought of it brings a fist to Jon’s throat. He leans his brow against the wildling’s as Tormund runs soapy hands over his chest and around to his back, then reaches for another bar to do the same to the wildling.

“And where will we live?” Jon asks, running his sudsy hands through Tormund’s hair, careful not to get any in his eyes. “Hardhome?”

“No,” Tormund scoffs, “that’s a fucking cursed place. No, we’ll find somewhere new, Jon Snow. Perhaps claim a corner of the forest as our own. The southerners call it haunted but there are holy lands inside those trees. Beautiful groves with fanged waterfalls and rivers to fish in.”

“Mm,” Jon hums, the warmth of the dream suffusing his well-worn muscles. He brings a bowl of water over Tormund’s head to rinse out his hair and the wildling kisses over his shoulder. “I’d like to see it. All of it.”

“And you will.”

“If we make it through the long night to come.”

Firm hands draw him back and Jon sets the bowl aside. Tormund regards him somberly, and Jon can’t help but think how remarkable he looks, hair slicked back and running over his shoulders, sun-worn skin glittering and gleaming in the firelight.

“I told you, Jon Snow,” the wildling says, “you’re not to die. Not until I let you. And I will not die until you let me.”

“Quite the promise to make.”

“If I speak like a god, perhaps the world will listen.” Tormund pulls him in by his thighs. “I won’t think of the rest. I’ve made it this far, little crow. I’ll build that home, and I’ll keep you in it, and I need you to believe you’ll be more than ashes when I do.”

And what can he say to that? Jon swallows hard and nods, tipping forward to press his brow to the wildling’s once more. His heart thunders rapidly beneath the muscle of his chest as Tormund gathers him close and in the water they stay, pretending the world outside it is but a memory and all they have is hope.

**Author's Note:**

> pls listen to muddy waters by LP i had that on loop while i wrote the secks omg


End file.
